Category

Published on

16 May 2011

Abstract

Refractive materials gives us some limited control of light: we can fashion lenses, and construct waveguides, but complete control of light is beyond simple refracting materials. Ideally we might wish to channel and direct light as we please just as we might divert the flow of a fluid. Manipulation of Maxwell's equation shows that we can achieve just that provided we have access to some highly unusual material properties. Metamaterials open the door to this new design paradigm for optics and provide the properties required to give complete control of light. One potential application would be to steer light around a hidden region, returning it to its original path on the far side. Not only would observers be unaware of the contents of the hidden region, they would not even be aware that something was hidden. The object would have no shadow.

Bio

Professor Sir John B. Pendry is an internationally renowned
researcher of the Imperial College London. He is a condensed
matter theorist and one of the most prominent scholars in the new
exciting field of metamaterials. Dr. Pendry has won numerous
awards including the British Vacuum Council Prize and Medal in
1994; the Institute of Physics Dirac Medal and Prize (1996); the EU
Decartes Prize for Extending Electromagnetism through Novel
Artificial Materials (2005) and the Royal Medal (2006).

Cite this work

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

John Pendry (2011), "Invisible cloaks and the perfect lens," http://nanohub.org/resources/11311.

Get Involved

Legal

nanoHUB.org, a resource for nanoscience and nanotechnology, is supported by the National Science Foundation and other funding agencies. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.